A Game Adaptation of the Mario Movie Seems Inevitable

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Nintendo always seems eager to experiment with the Super Mario brand. Although the series of Super Mario platforming games still form the heart of the overarching franchise, Nintendo has generated a ton of spinoffs, and many of them are big hits in their own right. Mario Kart provides Nintendo with a lucrative series of racing games, while the Mario Party series of party games offers minigames aplenty. In 2022, however, Nintendo will return to a long-abandoned type of Super Mario spinoff. Nintendo is working with Illumination of Despicable Me fame to produce a Mario movie with a star-studded cast playing the franchise's most well-known characters.

One wonders if the movie will stand all by itself, however, or if Nintendo has broader plans to support it. Super Mario merchandise themed toward the movie would make sense, but Nintendo might make the even more dramatic move of developing a new Mario game that's based on the events of the movie. The game's plot is up in the air, and there's no telling how closely it'll stick to Mario conventions, but Nintendo is so enthusiastic about the film that a game adaptation seems like the logical next step, even if that game adaptation is a totally new kind of Mario game.

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For most video game adaptations, screenwriters can take the lore and plot of a franchise and rework it to fit a movie or TV format. In that way, Mario is an odd franchise to adapt because there really isn't a broad story. Many games repeat narratives about Bowser kidnapping Princess Peach, leaving Mario and Luigi to save her, but there isn't much cohesion between games, save for specific spinoffs like the Mario and Luigi RPG subseries. The